Sermon Tone Analysis
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We must believe God’s Truth.
Trusting God is a matter of the will and truth.
We must know Him to trust him.
But having been exposed to the knowledge of the truth, we must then choose whether to believe the truth about God, which He has revealed to us, or whether to follow our feelings.
If we are to trust God, we must choose to believe His truth.
We must say, “I will trust You though I do not feel like doing so.”
Trusting God is a matter of faith, and faith is the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22).
Only the Holy Spirit can make His Word come alive in our hearts and create faith, but we can choose to look to Him to do that, or we can choose to be ruled by our feelings of anxiety or resentment or grief.
We are responsible to trust Him in times of adversity, but we are dependent upon the Holy Spirit to enable us to do so.
Bridges, Jerry.
Trusting God (p.
324).
The Navigators.
Kindle Edition.
We must know that God is sovereign, wise, and loving
—in all the ways we have come to see what those terms mean in previous chapters.
We must choose, by an act of our will, to trust God in major and minor difficulties.
For many years in my own walk of seeking to come to a place of trusting God at all times—I am still far from the end of the journey—I was a prisoner to my feelings.
I mistakenly thought I could not trust God unless I felt like trusting Him (which I almost never did in times of adversity).
Now I am learning that trusting God is first of all a matter of the will and is not dependent on my feelings.
I choose to trust God, and my feelings eventually follow.
We can do this regardless of how we may feel because we know that God is sovereign, wise, and loving.
The whole idea of trusting God is, of course, based upon the fact that God is absolutely trustworthy.
We must also lay hold of some of the great promises of His constant care for us.
One such promise we will do well to store up in our hearts is
Because God will never leave you nor forsake you, you are invited in the words of Peter to
He is not just there with you; He cares for you.
Trusting God is a matter of the will and is not dependent on my feelings.
There are three pitfalls in trusting God that we must be careful to avoid.
First, during times of temporal blessings and prosperity, we are prone to put our trust in those blessings, or even worse, in ourselves as the providers of those blessings.
In adversity we tend to doubt God’s fatherly care, but in prosperity we tend to forget it.
If we are to trust God, we must acknowledge our dependence upon Him at all times, good times as well as bad times.
Another pitfall we need to watch for is the tendency to trust in God’s instruments of provision rather than in God Himself.
We must be careful to look beyond the means and human instrumentalities to the God who uses them.
The third pitfall is that we are prone to turn to God in trust in the greater crisis experiences of life while seeking to work through the minor difficulties ourselves.
A disposition to trust in ourselves is part of our sinful nature.
It sometimes takes a major crisis, or at least a moderate one, to turn us toward the Lord.
A mark of Christian maturity is to continually trust the Lord in the minutiae of daily life.
If we learn to trust God in the minor adversities, we will be better prepared to trust Him in the major ones.
A Little exercise
How would you characterize David’s feelings in the following two verses?
Have you had an experience in which you chose to trust God despite your emotions?
If so, what happened to your emotions after you decided to trust God?
Is learning to trust God and cast our anxieties on Him something we get better at?
If so, how?
If not, why not?
Sometimes when we are anxious, there are things we need to do.
Sometimes there is nothing we can do.
Make a list of the things you are anxious about at this time in your life.
Which things do you need to act on, and which things do you need to leave in the hands of the Lord?
Do you tend to forget to trust God when things are going well?
How about when things are going badly?
What contrast do you see here?
What promise do you see in this verse?
How would you explain to an unbeliever why you choose to trust God?
These are some thoughts I want you to consider as we go head into the New Year.
It will help us to know that
No Matter What Comes Our Way, We Can, and Should, Choose To Trust God.
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